Transcript

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>> These old time phone booths are no longer good for actually making a phone call. But they've recently found a new purpose. I'm Havovi Cooper for Reuters, at an art installation in Times Square, where you can step into this phone booth.

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ck up the receiver, and listen to stories of immigrants all the way from Bangladesh to Ghana, who now call New York City home.

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Afghan-American artist Aman Mojadidi created the exhibit titled, Once Upon A Place. He was raised by migrant parents who moved to Florida from Kabul in the late 60's. Mojadidi says he understands the struggles of immigrants and wants to give their voices a platform.>> I collected migration stories from some of the newest New Yorker's as well as second and third generation immigrants.

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Talking about why they left their homeland, why they came to New York. And I collected the audio and have re-purposed three of the last phone booths to be removed from the streets of New York into audio players. Mojadid collected 70 different stories from legal and undocumented immigrants. Including a woman from Turkey who migrated to the US when she was 26 and has been living in Manhattan.

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>> It's nice but still sometimes without family it's so hard to live another country, another culture, everything is totally different.>> Jose Meja also contributed to this project. He was just two years old when his mother carried him across the border on her back from Mexico.>> What America means to me is the land of opportunities.

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It's a dream come true. Anyone who is willing to work hard to better their lives, can do so here in America.>> Mojadidi's exhibit is especially timely, opening to the public the same week that the Supreme Court partially upheld President Trump's travel ban on six Muslim majority countries.

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>> We speak in such generalities about policy and issues around immigration. What these stories do are really give you a one to one intimate relationship with the people talking. And really make you see their stories, their journeys, their histories from their point of view.>> Visitors will have a chance to listen to these stories until September 5th.